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In new research, Forrester examined 24 companies, including Tesla, Uber, and Ford, which seek to develop self-driving vehicles and their go-to-market approach. Forrester found that some companies, like Ford Motor Company and General Motors, are acquiring or investing in software startups, while others, like Toyota, are developing entirely new AV companies. Still other OEMs, like Chrysler and JaguarLandRover, have partnered in a bid to be the primary vehicle provider to tech companies that need vehicles to outfit.

In its research, Forrester found that venture capital funding more than doubled from 2016 to 2017, up from $7 billion in 2016 to $17 billion in 2017.

Acquisitions and partnerships are numerous, according to the report. For example, Intel purchased computer vision leader Mobileye to help build an end-to-end platform for AV development; and Ridecell, a platform provider for car-sharing, ridesharing, and autonomous fleet management, acquired AV technology developer AuroRobotics.

AV activity is concentrated in Silicon Valley and China, with three out of four companies evaluated in the report located in the U.S. China’s entrance into the market is largely due to its government policies that promote AV development.

The report identifies 24 AV companies and segments them by late, growth, and early stages of AV development, based on three dimensions: financial backing, company tenure, and employee count.

For autonomous vehicles to continue to grow and proliferate, standardization in how the vehicles communicate and interact with the environment is needed, states the report. In addition, battery technologies are expected to continue to advance because electric vehicle technology is progressing in parallel with autonomous driving systems. Further developments in nanocarbon technology will yield a new source of material for batteries, with faster charging times and greater energy storage capability.

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The global automotive industry – worth $3.5 trillion in annual revenues – faces four concurrent disruptive threats: the connected car, the electric vehicle, autonomous driving technology and the concept of transport-as-a-service. Each threat is potentially existential to legacy carmakers who operate in a low growth, low margin sector that rattles with over capacity, and which is seeing its supply lines reset by cumulative advances in enabling technologies typically deployed by Tier-1 automobile sub-system suppliers. This report focuses on autonomous driving technology.

This issue focuses on the end-to-end transformation of dSPACE, external HMI for pedestrian safety, the latest in over-the-air software updates, Urban Air Mobility commercialization efforts, and our special feature on new mobility and the COVID-19 pandemic.